On his very first visit to Kerala, Abhishek Sharma from Himachal Pradesh was all thrilled to learn that its beautiful language had been adorned with the much-venerable classical status. “It was very nice learning Malayalam. The techniques with which we learned were all the more beautiful,” said an excited Abhishek. So, happily, he uttered a few sentences, for example “ningal naale varumo?” (will you come tomorrow?), “njan naale Delhikku pokum.” (I’ll go to Delhi tomorrow).
Over the past week, 14 ‘students’ from North Indian states were at the Department of Linguistics on Kerala University’s Kariavattom campus learning the fundamentals of Malayalam language. They are the young professionals of Kudumbashree NRO (National Resource Organisation), under the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM). Kudumbashree is sharing the expertise and practices with other states in a set of domains.
“These professionals have to learn the activities of Kudumbashree. They have to interact with the people here and stay for some time. For this, it is essential that they learn Malayalam and that is why the language was taught,” said Liby Johnson, programme manager of NRO.
The ‘students’ learnt the language with the support of the audio-visual media, to understand it in a better way. The classes were conducted by Prema S, a faculty member, and Shijith S, technical officer, monitored by the head of the department S A Shanavas. “An orientation course is what we conducted for them. The language required for daily use and interaction was taught; for instance, the way to communicate with the vendors if they visited a market place,” said Shijith.
When some of the learners were entirely new to the language, there were others who found the course a chance to reinforce the knowledge they had imbibed. Coming from the Kannada speaking part of Kasargod, Sushma K S knew Malayalam in parts. “This course really fine-tuned my knowledge of Malayalam and now I can speak confidently,” said a happy Sushma.
The classes concluded on Friday.